Releasing Control
by Arthur88
Summary: Just a Collector-based drabble I wanted to get out of my head. The Collector General's perspective of the base's destruction and Harbinger's forsaking of the Collectors.


_Usually, I write for Dragon Age, but of late, my muse has been turning towards Mass Effect, so I've decided to write this to placate it. This is just a drabble I want to get out of my head; I'm not writing for reviews (though they would be welcome),merely for fun and to satisfy my muse and to try something different._

_This came together based on my enjoyment of the final cut scene in Mass Effect 2 as you escape the Collector Base and something I stumbled onto on one of the Bioware forums, a discussion regarding free will among the Collectors, considering the Collector General seems to show confusion/dismay as Harbinger abandons the Collectors to their fate and the fact that it seems to accept its death, so I've decided to write the ending of Mass Effect 2 from the Collector General's perspective, as it tries and fails to thwart Shepard's plans, only to be abandoned_

_Hope you enjoy my take on the Mass Effect storyline._

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The Reaper embryo topples into oblivion, fire streaking down its metal carapace and leaking from its inner mechanics as it falls, a screech of tortured metal followed by an almighty explosion as it hits the bottom of the pit over which it had been suspended as construction continued. The General felt a surge of anger from the presence embedded in the tech implants within its skull; considerable amounts of time and processed resources had gone into the construction of the embryo. To rebuild from scratch would be a frustrating and lengthy process; resources would not be an issue-there were still thousands of humans held in storage within the station, ready to be processed, but it would necessitate drones being assigned to the construction process, when they could be better used to function as vanguards for the oncoming Reapers.

A brief power surge distracts the General; an unusual reactor fluctuation that dies away almost as quickly as it flared up. Turning its attention back to the intruders, the General sees that the three who destroyed the embryo have come to rest in a maintenance room, where their plummet from the collapsing central chamber has deposited them. Flicking a switch on a console, the command it sent was rapidly relayed, and the room's vents opened, unleashing seeker swarms into the chamber, programmed to kill, not incapacitate. Watching the human, turian and quarian run for their lives, the ravenous seeker swarms in pursuit, it hears the master's voice coursing through its mind, using its flesh to speak, the Harbinger's voice rasping through the intercom...

"_Human, you've changed __**nothing**__. Your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction_"

The General knows that the Harbinger's words are true. It has seen what is coming, visions gleaned from the Master's presence in its skull of the Reapers bearing down on the galaxy, still blissfully unaware of their coming, to begin the next harvest and the Collectors will be at the vanguard of the Reaper onslaught into the galaxy-

Alarms blare, red lights flashing on a nearby console. The General turns, to discover the base's reactor is going into meltdown. Power conduits overloading, sparks flying, pipes and cables coming loose in the control room as emergency systems struggle to shut off the reactor. Entrusting the emergency systems to deal with the problem, the General turns its attention back to the fleeing intruders, diverting a squad of Collector drones to intercept them in the next passage...

The drones give pursuit, but the human's ship comes into view, even as a hailstorm of bullets open up at the trio's backs, jinking from side to side as they stagger up a slope towards the vessel. A crippled human limps out of the airlock, laying down suppressing fire as the turian and quarian reach the ship, dropping one of the drones, grey-brown ichor spurting from the bullet holes in its chest, and the rest of the squad fell back, as the human-_Shepard- _races towards the ship's airlock, falling debris smashing the bridge that the turian and quarian have raced across, the human sprinting towards the edge and leaping desperately, arms flailing as he frantically grasped the edge. The human dangled perilously on the rim of the airlock, drones letting loose a swathe of gunfire at his back, before the quarian seizes Shepard's wrist and helps him pull himself up into the ship. The quartet retreat back into the human ship, Shepard raising a middle finger at the drones as the airlock door seals and the vessel comes about, before its engines propel it out of a gap in the station's superstructure.

The General watches in futile disappointment as the ship escapes the base, before the blaring of alarms forces it to turn its attention back to the reactor meltdown. Its clawed limbs move from console to console, desperately trying to reroute power away from the reactor, to relieve the pressure on the system. Sparks continued to fly as electrical malfunctions caused by the diminishing levels of power begin to occur with alarming rapidity. Even as the General tries to contain the problem, a sudden explosion hurls it to one side of the control room, the General seizing one of the consoles to steady itself, even as the image of the Master pulses with brilliant gold light on the console in front of it...

"_You have failed_" the Master, the Harbinger hisses into its mind, the fury in its voice palpable, the General collapsing as pain rips through its body, the Master's power causing the tech implants within its flesh to burn excruciatingly in seeming punishment. "_We will find another way_"

'_Another way?'_ the General struggles to comprehend the pronouncement. No, that is unnecessary. This is a mere setback, no more. There are still thousands of humans to be processed, more than enough to begin construction of a new embryo and it has seen the intel, that the Reapers are within reach of the galaxy, the Bahak system soon to bear witness to their arrival. This setback is only temporary, it can be rectified...

"_Releasing control_" the Master rasps, the pain indescribable...and then it fades, along with the Master's image from the console and the General is left alone in the collapsing control room. Perhaps for the first time in its life, it is alone.

And it realises what it has become. No longer a proud Prothean, but a corruption of what once was, a perversion of life. A tech-riddled monster, repurposed to be a slave by the conquerors of its race. A tool used to facilitate the mass murder of thousands of sentient beings, the very thing its own race had died fighting to thwart the Reapers from doing in the last cycle. It has become an abomination, an affront to everything it had once stood for.

Death, the blessed oblivion of extinction, comes rushing towards it as a wall of fire, unleashed as the overloading reactor explodes, consumes the station and it welcomes the approaching end of its existence. Part of it, the slave, wants to die rather than try to exist without the Master's direction, while the other, the Prothean welcomes the end because it has seen, from Harbinger's mind, what is coming. The end of the cycle is about to begin, the next harvesting of organic life and from what it has seen, the part it has played to aid the coming genocide, the culling of advanced life, the oblivion of death is better than witnessing and worse, _participating _in what is about to come.


End file.
